


Familiar

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Loveless
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Animal Transformation, Anthropomorphic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6208402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't do love spells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my 2008 "thirteen things" Halloween theme - this one is #8, witch.

"But," the boy says, blushing, eyes huge behind his spectacles. "Can't you just--"

"I don't _do_ love spells," Ritsuka says flatly, glaring at his visitor. "I'll break the glamour if someone's been enchanted, but I won't enchant them for you. That's not real love anyway."

There's an agonized pleading in the boy's face, like he hopes even now Ritsuka will change his mind, but there's guilt there as well, thoughtfulness and resignation. "Oh. Well. Then can you make me taller?" he asks in a rush.

Ritsuka blinks, but _that_ request he doesn't deny.

"You went easy on him," Soubi observes, watching his master clean up now that the spell has been cast, their visitor already tripping down the overgrown path through the woods, heading back to town in a daze. The boy most certainly will be taller when he wakes in the morning, but he probably hasn't considered that he'll ache for a month because of it. Transformations generally hurt. Soubi knows.

"He's just a kid," Ritsuka says, ignoring the fact that he and the other boy are very likely the same age. "He wasn't thinking of the consequences. Now he is."

"That's very wise of you, Master." He purrs it, steps out of the shadows to murmur it into Ritsuka's round, human ear.

"Hmph," Ritsuka says and shies away from him. "I've seen it before, that's all."

Soubi wants to go after him, pull his master into a hug and wait out the flailing and the cursing until Ritsuka relaxes grudgingly into it, but that's not a familiar's place. A familiar's place is to protect his master, to assist and listen and comfort. And Ritsuka probably doesn't want any of those things from a homeless stray his brother picked up only to dump in his lap, leaving them both behind. Witches are like that, though, unable to cry, unable to love...though there are spells, he's been told, that can fool even another witch into believing it's possible. Ritsuka won't say. And maybe it matters that Seimei and Ritsuka are--were--brothers. He doesn't know. It's different with cats.

He watches Ritsuka fuss around the cottage for a few minutes more and decides that what the boy needs is tea. He's become very good at making it, is always pleased when Ritsuka brings him a new kind of mint, usually in apology, to plant in their garden. It makes for a very soothing brew, and filling the house with the steam is a bit like rolling the scent into his coat.

He misses his fur sometimes, but he's grateful to have kept his ears. It gives Ritsuka an excuse to stroke his head when he rests it in his master's lap later that evening, his tail curling and uncurling, slow and content, against the sheets. He doesn't even mind what Seimei did to him, because it means he can wrap his arms around his master, tangle his legs with Ritsuka's own, and try to teach the boy with a different kind of spell that he isn't as loveless as he thinks.


End file.
